Alden Projects™

Mixing unique and reproductive media, Alden Projects™ booth explores the strategic co-mingling of publicity in the art of the 1960s and the 1980s in Pop and Publicity: 60s vs. 80s. In addition to presenting signal works by first generation Pop artists, this booth explores the dialogue with the 1980s generation who self-consciously mined Pop strategies, reflecting--and reflecting upon--the publicity apparatuses of art and popular culture. Particular works include: a large scale subway drawing in chalk by Keith Haring (1982); rare wallpaper by Roy Lichtenstein (1968); rare and consequential prints and posters by Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Christopher Wool; last but not least, this booth also includes Robert Indiana'sLove (1965) exhibited here in its very first incarnation, commissioned by MoMA to be made for, and to function as a silkscreened Christmas card (1965); this Pop treasure is of legendary rarity (known but otherwise unseen even by most Robert Indiana scholars). Indiana's Love is juxtaposed with General Idea's edition, Aids Stamps (1988) which transformed the 1960s-era icon into an urgent message from the 1980s. Also presented as a dialectical coda are two recent sculptures by young French artist, Nicolas Giraud depicting Brillo Boxes fashioned after Warhol's, but here silkscreened only in black, white, and gray; conjuring up ghosts of archaic reproductive media, Giraud's Brillo Boxes recall the fading memories that Warhol's Pop was originally widely publicized in the black and white re-printings.